GPL code reuse questions

From:

Svante Signell

Subject:

GPL code reuse questions

Date:

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:51:50 +0200

Hi,
This mail is based on the recent bug-hurd thread of missing features of
Hurd: USB, SATA, sound, wireless, modern processors, etc. This question
comes up every time somebody mention the usability of Hurd (except the
inherent slowness)
According to my findings Hurd is licensed as GPL v2 only
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/users-guide/using_gnuhurd.html#GNU-General-Public-License
same as GNU/Linux even if it is a GNU project. This means that Linux
code could in theory be used if the copyright holders of the Linux code
agrees to transfer copyrights to GNU for the relevant parts.
Alternately, in case Hurd was re-licensed to GPL v2+ or v3+, code from
other GNU projects could be re-used to speed up development of the Hurd
feature-wise.
What are the problems of increasing code reuse between projects, the
main idea with GPL is to enhance the freedom of the users. Following
many project mailing lists, for me especially GNU projects, there seems
to be little or no interaction between the developers in different
projects!
I'm looking forward to install Hurd on real hardware, not only emulated,
and be able to use it also for day-to-day use. Porting of the Debian
installer to Hurd is a large step forward.
Thanks,
Svante Signell